Computerization as abuse of formal science:
Possible sources in Kant's philosophy
by Kristo Ivanov, prof.em., Umeå University
April 2020 (version 211206-2305)
http://www8.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/KantGramont.html
https://archive.org/editxml/kant-gramont
ABSTRACT
This is an attempt to explore the Enlightenment’s-origins of "mathematical-logical acrobatics" in science in general, and in the informational computer field in particular. Such acrobatics stands for the belief that ultimate practical truth represented by science and common-sense data must basically, if not exclusively, be framed in mathematical or logical form, kept in separation from philosophical, metaphysical and theological considerations, and therefore be amenable to processing by computers.
The impulse to make such an attempt arose from my concerns expressed in my earlier texts on Belief and reason, Chinese information systems: East and West, Information and debate, Information and theology, Computers as embodied mathematics and logic, and during my late study of a book (in French) bought more than twenty years ago but requiring the time for research allowed only after retirement from a university position dominated by administrative duties. The book is authored by Jérôme de Gramont with the title Kant et la question de l'affectivité: Lecture de la troisième critique, (Paris: Vrin, 1996, ISSN 0249-7913). My translation of the title in English: Kant and the question of affectivity: A reading of the third critique. In what follows I will renounce until further notice to translate French into English because I cannot bear such a burden, albeit indicating the possibility of an automatic on-line translation.
My conclusion will be that I perceive the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s work as being a compelling logical construction based on partly hidden and therefore unchallengeable definitional and “environmental” systemic premises. In doing so I further conclude that a proper understanding of Kant must rely on a study of his later critics and on an application of the criticism of the foundations of logic as suggested in my earlier mentioned text on Computers as embodied mathematics and logic.
My ultimate conclusion is that the decisive enticing influence of Kant’s philosophy on the Western enlightenment and thought underlines its split into reliance on computation, to be supposedly balanced by aestheticism and entertaining trendy creative “design”. This is the meaning of the title of this essay, referring to the abuse of logic and of a flawed concept of design originating from a corrupted Kantian aesthetics. It must be countered since it has promoted a defective if yet profitable science and technology by obscuring its theological and intellectual presuppositions. It can be done starting with diffidence or reluctance to believe in enticing logic as in natural or artificial “intelligence” as treated in my further paper on Artificial General Intelligence and ChatGPT, with consciousness of what is explained about “fact-nets” in Leibnizian Inquiring Systems conceived in the context of The Design of Inquiring Systems, and about How to Lie with Statistics”, implying rhetorically the possibility to “prove anything”.
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